Synthesis of biodiesel from castor oil: Silent versus sonicated methylation and energy studies

Abstract

In recent years, biodiesel is evolving to be one of the most employed biofuels for partial replacement of petrodiesel. The most widely used feedstocks for biodiesel production are vegetable oils. Among them, castor oil presents two interesting features as biodiesel raw material; on one hand, it does not compete with edible oils; on the other, the cultivar does not require high inputs. In this research, a comparison between conventional and ultrasound-assisted transesterification was carried out in terms of castor oil methyl ester (COME) yield and energy efficiency. Results show that sonicated transesterification leads to higher COME yields under lower methanol-to-oil molar ratio, lower amount of catalyst, shorter reaction time and lower amount of energy required. Ultrasound-assisted transesterification parameters were optimized resulting in the following optimum conditions: 20kHz fixed frequency, 70% duty cycle, 40% sonication amplitude, 4.87 methanol-to-oil molar ratio, 1.4% w/w amount of catalyst and 3 sonication cycles (3min 48s) that provided 86.57% w/w COME yield. The energy required along each type of transesterification was measured leading to the conclusion that sonicated transesterification consumes a significant lower amount of energy than conventional one, thus achieving higher COME yield.